Israel announced Wednesday that the bodies of four Palestinians were buried in ‘number cemeteries’ - one of the many cemeteries Israel has made over the decades where Palestinian bodies are buried in unmarked, but numbered, graves.

This comes despite an ongoing appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court by the families of the dead Palestinians, demanding the bodies of their relatives be released for proper burial, according to Palestinian Ma’an News Agency.

“The Israeli government has made a political decision to bury four bodies of slain palestinians without waiting for the Supreme Court to decide,” Muhammad Mahmoud, a lawyer for the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs said.

Mahmoud said that the Supreme Court ordered yesterday to postpone making a decision on the appeal to release the bodies of nine Palestinians who allegedly or actually carried out attacks, four of whom were buried in unmarked graves on the same day.

Muhammad Abu Sneina, a lawyer for the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center, said the announcement of the burial of the four slain Palestinians will not affect the appeal to release the five remaining bodies.

The appeal came after Israel’s Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan requested that the bodies be buried in the cemetery of numbers to be used as a bargaining chip with Hamas to secure the return of Israeli soldiers believed to be held in Gaza, Ma’an reports.

The Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs believes that Israel is withholding the bodies of 249 Palestinians, to be used as bargaining chips.